Amaranta
by Like Stars in the Sky
Summary: It was an electric feeling, a white-hot heat that boiled in her very blood, and she couldn't get enough of it, despite the fact that she didn't even know the male who'd given it to her.


**Amaranta**

**Prologue: Forgotten Dreams**

Airi didn't remember much of the previous night. Just bits and pieces really. There were flashes of color and an intense heat that left her gasping, even now that the sun filtered through the curtains, leaving streaks of light across her room. She vaguely remembered green fading into gold, red into silver, and then nothing. Everything went blank after that, just gone, and Airi couldn't, for the life of her, figure out why. But then, a thought invaded her mind. A thought that, maybe, it had all been a dream, and she didn't remember because it never got that far. The only thing that left even the barest hint that anything at all had actually happened was the fact that she was naked. Granted, she was naked in her own bed, but naked nonetheless.

Why she was naked eluded her, and Airi racked her brain almost desperately for a memory, any memory, that could tell her how she'd ended up like this. She got nothing but a fading, bruising ache between her legs that she was quite sure had never been there the night before. Throwing her bare legs over the side of the bed, Airi held a hand to her temple in an effort to massage away the splitting headache throbbing within the confines of her skull. Quietly, almost unconsciously, her tongue and lips were smacking together, and her nose scrunched up in distaste at the fuzzily awful taste leftover within the confines of her mouth. What was this, a hangover? Had she gotten drunk last night?

With a groan as her hand returned to her head, Airi trudged her way down the hallway and into the bathroom, intent on using a nice hot bath to ease away the imaginary soreness her simple dream had conjured up. Because honestly, it couldn't have been real soreness because she was still a virgin and the things she didn't remember were just a forgotten dream.

It had to be a dream because, though she didn't remember near enough to make sense of anything, Airi was not the kind of girl who just went around having sex with complete strangers, drunk or not.

Right?

**oOoOo**

Shuuichi Minamino was a true momma's boy, not to mention polite to a fault. Or, that's how most people saw him, anyway. Underneath the surface, he was Kurama, a deadly opponent with a demonic talent for manipulating plants. He was in possession of a dangerous intellect, unrivaled in his stealth and strategy. And he was worried.

Pacing back and forth not three feet in front of the hybrid leaning against his wall, Kurama ran a hand through his fiery red hair in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness.

"Will you quit that idiotic pacing, Kurama?" Hiei asked (ordered, more like), his arms crossed over his chest as his eyes followed Kurama's form back and forth across the room. "You're giving me a headache."

"You don't understand, Hiei!" Kurama exclaimed, stopping in front of him. "She _saw_ me! I transformed in front of her!"

The hybrid beside the window actually rolled his eyes as Kurama sat back onto the bed with his head in his hands. "You erased her memories, didn't you, Fox?"

Kurama looked up from his hands. "Yes. Most of them, at least. I didn't get to finish."

At hearing this, Hiei perked up in almost shocked interest. "What do you mean, you didn't finish?"

"Exactly that," he said, standing up again. "I was interrupted by the return of her roommate."

"Her roommate?" Hiei repeated, his usual, indifferent glare in place. "Kurama, you've grown soft if you think you had to run and hide with the interference of one measly human. You're more than strong enough to take care of both of those girls on your own."

"Actually, her roommate is male," Kurama told him, his ever calm mask back in place.

"That changes nothing, Kurama," Hiei told him, scowling. "Tell me why you really saw fit to run away like a coward."

Kurama sighed quietly. "Her roommate happens to be a former classmate of mine from Meiou. He was an average student, with average grades and absolutely no extra-curriculars. I wouldn't have remembered him at all had it not been for the fact that he took a rather odd liking to me senior year."

"So, you ran away because her roommate is gay?" Hiei asked him with a condescending eyebrow raised.

"That's a bit harsh, but yes, it was something like that," Kurama told him.

Hiei rolled his eyes and stepped away from the wall. "You are a fool Kurama. Tell me where this girl is, and I'll go myself to make sure she remembers nothing."

**oOoOo**

When Airi stepped out of the bath, she felt like a new person, ready for anything in her fresh, clean state. That, however, didn't prepare her for the unfamiliar black-clad male blocking the doorway.

"Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my apartment?!" she exclaimed, reaching up to grip tightly onto the edge of her towel as she took an unconscious step backward away from him. Her legs bumped into the edge of the still-draining tub behind her.

"That doesn't matter," he told her, and his voice, cold and irritated, sent a shiver of fear up her spine; that man, whoever he happened to be, was dangerous, very, _very_ dangerous. "You won't remember me anyway."

Something glowed behind his white headband, and shocked, Airi's eyes snapped to stare at it, and then, the world around her blurred to the point of darkness and she knew no more.

**All that time I wasn't updating? Yeah, I was still writing. Just not on anything that had been on the site already. I just get all these ideas, one after another, and I have to write them down. I rarely finish them, though, which is something I aim to fix with time. This is one idea I wrote **_**ages**_** ago. Hope you guys like it!**


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